Sunday, June 6th, 2021
Fatal scandal exposure
When Canellas almost destroyed the Bundesliga
Posted by Ben Redelings
Fifty years ago today, a spectacular tape recording in the garden of the President of Offenbacher Kickers, Horst-Gregorio Canellas, triggered the Bundesliga scandal. The effects were not only threatening the existence of the league!
Horst-Gregorio Canellas, the import merchant for tropical fruits, who exactly 50 years ago on his 50th birthday at a garden party started the biggest Bundesliga scandal to this day, sat a few years later with his daughter on the scheduled flight from Mallorca to Frankfurt in the famous “Landshut” plane. This machine was hijacked by terrorists at the time and finally liberated in Mogadishu by the German special unit GSG9.
The former president of Offenbacher Kickers was already suffering from severe tuberculosis and was marked by life. Looking back, however, he said of the plane hijacking: “The scandal was worse, much worse. Mogadishu still had human traits.”
On June 6, 1971, when the bomb burst that almost destroyed the Bundesliga, Canellas invited an illustrious group of journalists and celebrities to his garden. Among them were the acting national coach Helmut Schön and the DFB league secretary Wilfried Straub. When all the guests were about to toast the jubilee with a glass around noon, the president of Offenbacher Kickers, who had been relegated from the first division two days earlier, gave an employee a sign.
The latter reacted immediately and, under Canellas’ words, pressed – “And now, gentlemen, listen to me!” – the button of a tape recorder. What happened after that cannot be described in any other way than this: The croaking words from the player almost triggered the final exodus of the still young Bundesliga.
The day of reckoning
From one day to the next, the scandal turned a success story on its head. Over 800,000 people (!) Fewer came to the stadiums in the season after the shock. The fans obviously do not forgive their protagonists for having played the wrong game with them and football in Germany in a clumsy way. Today we know that at least 18 games from the 1970/71 season had been postponed for large sums of money. Right in the middle of this dirty swamp full of deceivers was Horst-Gregorio Canellas.
The President of Kickers Offenbach tried by all means to keep his club in the top division. When, shortly before the end of the round, he realized that this endeavor was hopeless because other clubs were also playing the wrong game, he pulled the rip cord. As a bad loser who wanted to drag as many rivals as possible into the abyss with his own defeat, he began to hold talks with protagonists of the Bundesliga – solely with the aim of later using these talks against the respective people. Together with a reporter from the “Bild” newspaper, he took up these conversations.
After all, June 6, 1971 was the day of his personal reckoning – and it backfired completely. Because what the guests of the garden party then heard, hit like a bomb in the truest sense of the word. The foundation of the league was just a pile of rubble. In the following years, laborious efforts were made to rebuild the foundations of the Bundesliga, parallel to the trial against the defendants.
“The biggest mistake of my life”
That this was sorely needed is shown by the words of the renowned sports journalist Richard Kirn, who at the time asked himself in his popular column how things could go on: “We talked about the slowly and painfully creeping affair. Mr. Appeasers and I.” That ‘said my interlocutor,’ nothing but teething troubles. ‘ And I: ‘You can also die of teething troubles!’ The patient is called Bundesliga. If his illness is not burned out with red-hot irons, the end will be bitter. “
At that time, the negotiations in court dragged on because not all players wanted to admit their guilt immediately. Right from the start, the game on the 28th matchday on April 17, 1971 between FC Schalke 04 and Arminia Bielefeld was in the public eye. The match ended with a 0: 1 for S04. For the defeat, the Royal Blues received a premium of 40,000 marks in total, which was a relatively ridiculous sum of 2,300 marks per player. The Schalke team alone could have earned 1,000 marks as a bonus on that day. But since the players denied it in court for many years, FC Schalke 04 is still known as “FC Perjury” among football fans to this day.
Ben Redelings is a passionate “chronicler of football madness” and a supporter of the glorious VfL Bochum. The bestselling author and comedian lives in the Ruhr area and maintains his legendary treasure trove of anecdotes. For ntv.de he writes down the most exciting and funniest stories on Tuesdays and Saturdays. More information about Ben Redelings, his current dates and his book with the best columns (“Between Puff and Barcelona”) can be found on his website www.scudetto.de.
One of the people who took the money back then and was later banned was the international striker Klaus Fischer. Due to the suspension of the DFB, the man from Zwiesel in Bavaria also missed the 1974 World Cup in his own country. No wonder that Fischer describes accepting the money in 1971 as the “biggest mistake of my life”.
Just the poor victim
The goalkeeper of 1. FC Köln, Manfred Manglitz, who was also found guilty, has not yet made this admission. The DFB had banned him for life and finally pardoned him in 1974. But Manglitz did not return to the Bundesliga. Canellas’ conversation with him is one of the most gruesome pieces of the secretly recorded tape passages and one of the most impressive documents of the Bundesliga scandal. The cool and bold professionalism with which the fraud was discussed here is hard to believe, even after almost five decades. And something else.
The goalkeeper later showed no mercy for Canellas despite the hostage-taking by terrorists – he only saw himself, the poor victim Manfred Manglitz: “You know, when Canellas from Offenbach was sitting in the machine that was kidnapped to Mogadishu, I thought: I’m not a believer, but if there really is a dear Lord, then he knows justice. Just like this Canellas tricked me back then …! ” If you read these lines, it is almost a miracle that the Bundesliga survived its “childhood illness” and became more and more popular in the years that followed. Fifty years ago, even Horst-Gregorio Canellas probably could not even begin to estimate the deep human abysses that made this scandal possible.
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